


Summer Storms

by Kissed_by_Circe



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dancing in the Rain, Fire escape talks, Star Gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24572365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kissed_by_Circe/pseuds/Kissed_by_Circe
Summary: Right now, she wants nothing more than to listen to the music drifting through the windows, taste the rain on her lips, feel Jon’s fingers grazing the small of her back, and watch his mouth twitch again in that peculiar way of his.Loosely inspired byBreakfast at Tiffany’s
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 12
Kudos: 36





	Summer Storms

She’s surprised when she steps out onto the fire escape, seeking a moment of quiet solitude, only to be met with the sight of Jon Snow – beautiful as ever, even more so in the soft light of the sinking sun – and she startles, only a bit, but enough for him to look at her bashfully. She should have expected him here, hiding from the crowd that fills the living room, the dining room, and as even the kitchen is too full of guests having the time of their lives, it’s only natural for him to come out here.

A soft breeze has managed to cool down the summer air, and no one’s out here on the makeshift balcony. Sansa has to be careful with her block heels on the open grate floor, and the paint on the banisters has flaked off, but she still likes it out here. Maybe it’s because of Jon, and his bashful look and how he offers to go back inside, if she wants to be out here on her own for a bit, maybe it’s the fresh air, she doesn’t know, but she likes it.

“Do you need fire?” she murmurs with a look at his cigarette, hanging unlit from his long, slender fingers, and he shakes his head. “Don’t smoke anymore. It’s just a decoy, a better excuse than _I need some air_ sometimes, you know?” She just nods in understanding. If this were a movie she’d ask him for that cigarette, put her lips around it where his fingers touched it, lean close so that he could lit it, hold it between two fingers the way Margaery would do, but she doesn’t smoke, and cigarettes only look good in movies, anyway.

“You want to talk while we hide out here, or would you prefer silence?” His voice is soft, and she shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk to those people in there right now, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to talk to you,” she offers, and his smile, just a twitch of his mouth, a pull in his cheek that could hint at a dimple in the low light, is answer enough.

Her brother’s friend never talked much, not before the war and even less when he returned with scars on his face, a trembling in his hand, and a weariness in his eyes that she understands only too well. They are celebrating Robb’s twenty-fifth birthday tonight, when many of their friends and comrades haven’t been lucky enough to make it to twenty, and she can understand his reluctance to go and drink the way her brother did.

“You know, I never thought that we would one day stand together like this, hiding from a party,” he starts, and stops, clearly remembering how she’d kept away from him during their shortcut teenage years, and it breaks her heart a little. “I never thought that I’d climb out a window to escape a party, but here we are, I guess,” she tries, and this time his smile is deeper. No dimples, but the way his eyes turn soft is good enough for her.

A few years ago, she wouldn’t have spared him a second thought, and she remembers what she thought it would be like for her once she would be old enough to attend and host parties. Seeing her parent’s guests arrive in silk and glitter, only to be sent to bed, listening to the music and the laughter, muted through the floors between her upstairs bedroom and the living room downstairs, she had dreamt of handsome young men and dancing the night away, but reality is often different from what we expect as children.

She always envisioned herself as the gracious hostess in the elegant cocktail dress, organizing a party for her husband, showing off her darling little girl to her guests, but tonight her sister-in-law plays this role, and Sansa isn’t sure any more of what she wants from life. She had parties and charity galas, almost a husband, almost a life like this. Right now, she wants nothing more than to listen to the music drifting through the windows, taste the rain on her lips, smell the mix of cologne and musk clinging to Jon, feel his fingers grazing the back of her hand, and watch his mouth twitch again in that peculiar way of his.

But their moment together is cut short when Jeyne, sweet, gracious, elegant Jeyne, knocks on the window behind them, and Jon takes half a step to the side. They’re still crammed together on the tiny fire escape, his warmth still seeping through the silk of her dress where their sides touched, but the silence, the spell is broken, and there’s a distance between them where there was none only seconds ago. He seems bashful, and she rubs her arms to stop goose bumps from forming on them in the suddenly chilly breeze.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt you two,” Jeyne’s eyes sweep over them, over Sansa’s bare arms and Jon’s hands shoved in his pockets, and she tries to smile at them. “You’re not interrupting anything,” Jon mumbles after a glance at Sansa, and she nods along. Jeyne’s smile is half quizzical, half tense, and she lowers her voice when she puts her hand on Sansa’s shoulder. “Um, I’m sorry to ask this, but we’re out of bourbon, do you think you could go and get some more?”

It’s a strange request, but Sansa’s not one to openly question something her sister-in-law tells her, and so she forces a bright smile on her face, but Jeyne discreetly points at the window and mouths _Harry_ , and Sansa understands her warning. She doesn’t want to deal with her former fiancé or his pregnant wife right now, and she thinks about how she can sneak out without drawing attention, when she feels Jon’s fingertips brushing over her bare arm.

“The bar down by that Fossoway store should be open,” he tells them, the deep, but soft rumble of his voice sending shivers down her spine, and he looks shy again when he mumbles, “I’ll go with you, it’s almost dark and I’ll help carry the bottles.” Sansa doesn’t miss the way Jeyne grins at her, but she can’t react because Jon keeps looking at her, so she flashes him a bright smile and grips the railing.

“We’ll be faster if we go down here, the flat’s too crowded,” she explains, and takes his hand when he offers it. He helps her down the ladder, and two storeys closer to the ground, he puts his hands on her waist to help her onto the sidewalk. He takes a step back as soon as she’s steady on her heels, but she still feels the warmth of his hands through her dress, and when she rubs her arms again, he shrugs off his leather jacket and drapes it over her shoulders. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to, my coat is still upstairs,” she tries to explain, but he shrugs, and offers her his hand once more.

It’s a bit like in a movie, the way he looks at her and how he holds out his hand, as if he were saying _come with me, darling, I’ll take you on an adventure_ , or _take my hand_ _, I’ll rescue you._ She doesn’t know what it would mean if they were in a movie, but she likes it, and his fingers are warm in hers.

♕

The way down to the bar is short, Jon heaves a box filled with bourbon and some baguette onto his shoulders and glares at the bartender when he makes a bawdy joke about the two of them, while Sansa blushes, and they are standing outside Robb’s building before they know it.

Somehow the easiness of their little chat has returned, and she sways on her heels next to him, stepping through a dance he doesn’t know. Light spills out of the windows, music and laughter are drifting down, the shatter of glass and a shrieking laugh hint at something that might become an inside joke or might be forgotten before the shards are put away. He feels almost wistful looking up the building’s front – she’ll smile at him and go up and have fun, and he’ll go home, watch his own lone figure in dark shop windows while he wanders through streets full of people who all have somewhere to go – but then she looks up as well and pulls his jacket closer around herself.

“Do you plan on keeping that?” he asks, gesturing towards the jacket, and she fumbles with the hem for a moment, looking bashfully. “Are you leaving already?” she asks instead of an answer, and he’s not sure if she sounds disappointed or hopeful. “Yes. It’s too crowded up there. Too loud for me,” he admits, but she smiles at him and he almost melts. “Would you walk me home? It’s only a few metres, only if you don’t mind, of course.”

If he had a way with words, he’d say something like _I’d like nothing more_ or even _I’d walk to the moon with you_ or anything like that, but he’s not good at talking like that, so he just nods. A late guest, almost bumping into them in his haste to get to the party, agrees to take the box with him, and suddenly his hands are free again, free to take one of hers, but she somehow falls into step next to him on his right side, and he flexes his bad hand for a moment, feels the skin tighten over his knuckles before he balls it into a fist to keep it from shaking.

They walk in silence the first few minutes, through a part of King’s Landing that only starts to feel alive now, streets lined with people enjoying their evening or getting some last errands done, groups of giggling people coming out of a cinema, a theatre troupe in bright costumes re-enacting the best part of their play over their dinner to the amusement of the whole square, a young man getting down on his knees before a girl who looks like she’s about to faint, and he feels so far away from it all that it almost hurts.

He doesn’t even realize that she’s taken his hand, looping her arm through his and intertwining their fingers, until she pulls him out of the way to avoid a collision with a group of drunken teenagers, and suddenly he feels almost included. She hangs on his arm the way most girls do on their boyfriends’, and it feels like they’re on their way to a date, like he picked her up at home and she took his jacket to show that they’re together and they’re simply enjoying each other’s presence while they walk to the cinema or a comedy show or a cosy restaurant.

It feels good, and his fingers stop trembling when he holds her hand like this.

She guides them through the crowds with a surety in her step that he can’t help but admire, and when they reach the quieter streets leading to her place, she slows down, and they stroll past closed shops and elegant restaurants where no one screams with laughter. If he were braver, he’d wrap his arm around her, but he’s not that kind of brave, and so he simply listens to her soft, soothing voice as she talks of everything and nothing. She could talk for hours, and he’d listen gladly to everything she has to say.

He knows that the war has left its scars on her, not as visible as the ones on his face and chest and bad hand, but more painful in a way, and he wishes that he could make it all undone, or at least keep her from ever getting hurt again. Of all of them, she is the one who deserves to be happy the most.

A drop of rain hits his face, and he almost swears, but Sansa looks up at the sky and smiles. “I love summer storms, they make one feel powerful in a way,” she tells him, and while waiters and patrons hurry to bring their food under the dry safety of their restaurants’ awnings, she steps out into the deserted street and spreads her arms. Thunder rolls over the city, and she grins in a way that makes him fall in love with her even more. The wind picks up, and a soft drizzle drains the air, so heavy with electricity and heat only hours before, of the stench of a city in the summer.

“Just imagine that you’re on a ship, fighting against the waves, and the wind and the spray hits your face and your blood is drumming in your veins.” He knows what she means, he knows the passion and the strength of a storm whipping through a city, so different from the soft, but lazy heat of endless sunshine, and when she starts twirling around and holds out her hands for him, he grabs them and pulls her into a spin.

He doesn’t know where it comes from, he’s never been a good dancer, but he tries, and they probably look mad, a couple of mad people twirling and spinning around on the wet pavement, but he doesn’t care, not when he manages to pull her into his arms. They sway for a moment or a thousand, while the storm fades, and when the sky is cloudless again, when the waiters start wiping down chairs and wringing out table cloths, he wraps his arm around her waist.

♕

Their hair clings to their faces, their clothes are soaked and she shivers in the cold, but she is pressed into his side, his body shielding her from the outside world, and she giggles in a way she hasn’t in years. His face is bright with joy, and when she squeezes his burned fingers, they squeeze back. “Maybe – maybe we could get changed, dry our hair and – go somewhere to have dinner?” she proposes, not looking at him, and she hears his smile when he pulls her closer still. “Yeah, that’d be nice.” He pulls his jacket closer around her, and the look he gives her makes her heart melt.


End file.
